We really like the Collapsed Topics format and have made it the default for new courses at UMass Amherst. We made a few modifications we would like to share with you. We would be quite pleased if you would consider incorporating them.

We made two basic changes:

• The toggle arrows conform to the standard of Right arrow = closed/collapsed and Down arrow=open. This is how the fly out menus in the Moodle Navigation work, and is a common convention. (Our users found the up and down arrows confusing.)

• When editing is on, the link to the collapsed topics settings page is just a regular-sized text link with a small wrench icon (instead of the very large orange toolbox). We located the Collapsed topics settings link inside the "toggle-all" element (for proximity).

I've attached our current version of the format. It has a few other alterations that you can ignore. For instance, we've hidden some of the options from the settings (too many options overwhelm our faculty, who build their own courses), and we changed the lang file for the help tips for Set structure setting, to make the options a little more clear for our audience.

If you like our ideas, there may well be better ways to implement them. Much of what I did is just CSS hacks (all commented) since that's easier to maintain. Anyway, I hope you take a look.

Michele

Gareth addition: Adding to this an idea by Rick Jerz that the toggle text should have a setting to determine if it should be centered or left aligned. And for Right to Left languages, I'll add right aligned too - Moodle 2.4 only unless requested as much more work in 2.3.